What do you get when you cross a career lawyer with a wet lettuce? Apparently, the current Prime Minister.
Sir Keir Starmer’s government is barely out of the honeymoon suite, yet it’s already tripping over itself like a drunk uncle at a wedding. U-turn after U-turn — on winter fuel payments, grooming gang inquiries, welfare reform — and with the two-child benefit cap looming like an iceberg off the port side, you can bet your last battered pound coin there’s another embarrassing reversal on the way.
This isn’t bold leadership. This is cowardice in slow motion.
The Winter Fuel Farce
Let’s start with Labour’s decision to ditch plans to means-test the Winter Fuel Payment. Initially floated as a “tough but fair” policy that would redirect cash from well-off pensioners to fund other priorities, the party quickly backtracked the moment the tabloids got wind of it. The result? A week of flustered briefings, shadow ministers contradicting each other, and Starmer squirming in interviews like he was sitting on a hot radiator.
This was Labour’s big chance to show they had fiscal discipline. Instead, they folded faster than a deckchair in a gale. And why? Because they’re obsessed with not looking “too Labour”. Heaven forbid they stand by anything remotely redistributive — it might offend some retired BBC executives in the Home Counties.
Grooming Gangs: A U-turn on a U-turn
Here’s one for the political history books — a U-turn on a U-turn.
Before the election, Starmer promised a new national inquiry into grooming gangs. After his victory? Nothing. It vanished from the agenda. Ministers went quiet, briefings got vague, and the promise looked all but scrapped. It was betrayal dressed up as “focus on future policing”.
But now — under pressure from the press, victims’ groups, and some of his own MPs — Starmer’s flipped again. The inquiry is back on. Apparently.
Let’s not pretend this was a principled decision. It was a panic move. The initial backtrack caused fury across the Red Wall, where communities still bear the scars of industrial-scale abuse and institutional failure. Starmer saw the blowback and did what he always does: reverse course and act like nothing happened.
How can victims trust a Prime Minister who only acts when it becomes politically inconvenient not to?
Benefits Reform: Another Collapse Under Pressure
This week, it was benefits reform that went through the Starmer spin-cycle.
Just days ago, the government was proudly briefing that it would “review” work capability assessments and reform the current benefits system to get more people into work. Labour wanted to look “tough but fair” — a rebranding of old Tory rhetoric, dressed up in Blairish buzzwords.
But the moment disability campaigners, unions, and even Labour MPs started kicking off, the tone changed. Fast. Starmer now says there will be no major shake-up, just “consultation,” “listening,” and “making sure we get it right.”
Translation? They’ve bottled it. Again.
This is a man who can’t even stick to his own spin. One moment it’s “ending welfare dependency”, the next it’s “compassionate reform”. All it takes is a stiff breeze of criticism and the whole policy collapses like a Poundland deck of cards.
This isn’t leadership. It’s theatre — badly staged and instantly forgettable.
The Two-Child Cap: Next in the Queue
And now we come to the next U-turn waiting to happen: the two-child benefit cap.
Labour say they’ll keep it. They say the “economic situation” is too grave to lift the cap. That it wouldn’t be “fiscally responsible”. Sound familiar?
It’s the same placeholder excuse they used for scrapping free school meals, shelving tuition fee reform, and ditching public sector pay restoration. The reality is, Starmer’s waiting for a moment when he can drop the policy without spooking middle England.
But here’s the thing — keeping the cap means keeping hundreds of thousands of children in poverty. It’s a cruelty that defies justification. And sooner or later, even Labour’s own backbenchers will turn on it. Another U-turn is inevitable — it’s just a question of when.
No Grip. No Backbone. No Authority.
What ties all this chaos together isn’t just weak messaging — it’s a Prime Minister who has no real authority within his own party.
These U-turns aren’t bold corrections — they’re panicked responses to internal revolt. His top team leaks like a sieve, backbenchers brief against policy hours after it’s announced, and ministers make contradictory statements like they’re running separate governments.
This is not the behaviour of a leader in charge. It’s the sign of someone desperately trying to hold together a coalition that doesn’t believe in him — or his agenda. Starmer is managing his party, not leading it.
He promised unity. What we got is a paper-thin consensus that crumbles the moment pressure is applied.
Final Thought
Every time this government hits reverse, another bit of public trust goes out the window. Starmer’s problem isn’t just that he changes his mind — it’s that he never makes it up in the first place. He leads from behind, lets others do the fighting, then steps in to claim credit or shift blame.
if this is what the first year looks like, heaven help us over the next four years.
